“Perhaps you should make one. I can help.”

Her brow furrowed with confusion. “Why would you want to help?”

“You could use a distraction, and I could use a new goal. The woman I wanted didn’t want me back, so we parted ways. Now...” He shrugged.

“Women are goals to you?”

“Why not? My goals keep me from sitting on a couch, watching soap operas all day and eating old pizza.”

“But if you don’t feel anything, how do you know when you want a woman?”

“I rarely feel emotion, but I often feel desire. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, lass.”

“That’s true.” She smiled her saddest smile at him. “I feel all kinds of emotion, but never desire.”

A spark of curiosity lit his expression. “You are of age, yes?”

Dreading where he was going with this line of questioning, she gave a hesitant, “I’m a legal adult, yes.” Finally.

“And you’ve never desired a man?”

She stared at the water as the sun disappeared on the horizon. Shadows fell over her hideaway, the torches burning atop a wealth of poles circling her providing the only light. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, precisely, fighting the rise of shame and hate and horror that always found a way to the surface of her heart whenever this topic came up.

“Ah. I understand. Someone hurt you.” He said it so matter-of-factly.

Her hackles rose. “I don’t want to talk about it. Change the subject or leave.” Well, well. The burst of anger had come with a side of strength. One she hadn’t experienced since this whole thing had kicked off.

He didn’t change the subject and he didn’t leave. “I will kill the male responsible. Just tell me his name.”

“Names. Plural,” she snapped, then pressed her lips together. She was confident William had already killed them. She’d lived with the Lords for three years now, and she’d sometimes looked up the names of her tormentors—a compulsion she despised. One day she’d discovered a police report about their horrific murders. Though no bodies had been found, their blood and...other things had been splattered all over the walls and floor of the very house where she’d suffered. The case remained unsolved.

When she’d questioned William, he’d hurriedly distracted her with a new video game, as if he feared her reaction. Except he never feared anything!

But she feared her reaction. Gratitude struck her as inappropriate, but then, so did anger.

“One man or one hundred. It makes no difference to me,” Puck said, still so matter-of-fact.

“Thanks for the offer, but they’re already dead.”

He nodded. “William must have taken care of them.”

“Are you on friendly terms with William?” she asked.

“I know of him and I’m sure he knows of me, but we’ve never officially met.”

“If you want to be his friend, sneaking around his property isn’t—”

“I don’t want to be his friend. He can hate me. I don’t care one way or the other.”

“That’s unwise. If you aren’t his friend, you’re his enemy. His enemies die. Painfully.” A fact she’d had to accept about him. He was what he was, and there was no changing him. Not that she wanted to change him. Why mess with perfection?

Puck smiled at her, for a moment he was almost...adorable? “My enemies die gratefully, glad to finally escape me.”

She rolled her eyes. “You immortals and your blood feuds.”

“Don’t you mean us immortals?”

A pang of longing—I want to live. One she ignored. “I’m going to die, remember? Before the transformation is complete.” So weird to say! “And I don’t want to think up a bucket list.” She’d have to pick things she could do from her sickbed, and how sad was that?

“You will die, yes.” He threw a pebble into the water. “I could marry you, I suppose. Save you.”

She gaped at him. “Are you actually proposing to me?”

“Yes. No. I don’t want to marry you, but I don’t not want to marry you. It’s just something to do. Something with the potential to be mutually beneficial.”

I can live! Maybe. Or she could kill him.

All right, let’s say she married him and she survived the transformation. What then? They would be man and wife. He would want to do things to her body, just as she dreaded. Bile churned, her stomach threatening to rebel. “Aren’t you worried I’ll make you mortal?”